Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday June 06, 2013 @07:05AM
from the here-comes-the-power dept.

olsmeister writes "The new all-solid battery design uses solid sulfur and lithium, and outperforms existing lithium-ion batteries with four times the energy density. The battery can maintain a capacity of 1200 milliampere-hours per gram after 300 charge-discharge cycles. More work needs to be done, but one would think this new technology could have applications in renewable energy storage, electric cars, and consumer electronics."

I use a 30 amp-hour 12 volt battery when camping, it's about 20 pounds (for fans, lights, bug zapper, , phone charger, electric blanket, inverter for laptop, etc). I've saved a ton of money not having to purchase D batteries and I can expect 5-8 years of use (hundreds of duty cycles).

"1200 milliampere-hours" is 1.2 amp hours. A battery of this type would weight 25 grams, or less than an ounce. If it's at 12 volts, which per the article (I read it!!!) doesn't sound like the case. But I bet a comparable 12 volt version would weight just ounces rather than pounds.

Li-ion is around 3.7V (+-0.4, depending on exact design). So this is about a 1.8V battery. So for a reasonable approximation, multiply by about 7 for a 12v version. That puts a 12v, 1.2AH version at 175g. Plus a little more for the casing. Not bad at all. Add case, and your 30AH battery can be replaced with a five-kilo battery. A bit heavy for a pocket, but but by much.

It's +- a lot more than 0.4V depending on charge. One of the problems with li-ions is the substantial difference between charged and discharged voltages, requiring devices be able to operate efficiently right across the range.

I've seen li-ions/lipo rated from around 3.2 to 3.9 volts nominal, depending just upon the exact design of the cell - there are a few variations of the chemistry in use. They all function much the same, and the vast majority of cells are labeled 3.6 or 3.7.

The article states that the voltage of the LiS cell is 'about half' the voltage of a Li-ion, so that's about 2V/cell. You'd need at least 6* to make 12V, so that means a 12V, 30Ah battery would consist of 25 parallel sets of 7 cells in series and weigh in at 175g, or about 6 ounces - quite a weight savings.

*"12V" isn't really 12V exactly. It's more like 13.8 under charge and as low as 10.5-11 at discharge. Most gizmos expect the voltage toward the higher end, so using 7 cells isn't uncommon among DIY-ers (I

Anyone know why we name batteries the way we do?Car batteries for instance are normally charged at around 14V and under heavy load dip to 11v. NIMH AA float at 1.45v and are generally 1.2v loaded. Alkaline start at 1.6v and drop down very fast past 1.5v. They probably spend very little of their lives at 1.5v since their discharge curve sucks out loud. At high enough dishcarge currents they can drop from 1.6v to below 1.5v almost immediately.

Loaded is loaded - you never get a perfect source. Even a concrete beam sags under load. 1.8v peak charge isn't too bad, and probably well within spec for AAA/AA/C/D batteries, and that's where the big deal may be. You can always run multiple cells in series to jack up the voltage, but it's much harder to cut the voltage in half to fit existing batteries. Isn't there an iron sulfate based battery that's 1.7-1.8V? The old Lithium AAs were 1/2 voltage at about 1.7x - I still have the same set in my Nikon cam

They're named the way they are because of their chemistry. An alkaline cell [wikipedia.org] has an open circuit voltage of 1.43V - close enough to the old Zinc-Carbon [wikipedia.org] cell's OC voltage of 1.5V. A lead-acid cell [wikipedia.org] has an open circuit voltage of about 2.1V. 6 of those in series makes 12-ish V. The cell potential between the anode and cathode materials determines their open circuit voltage (see this chart [wikipedia.org]).

The article says that the battery delivers about half of the voltage of a typical lithium ion battery (which is usually around 3.7V).

So 1.2Ah/g * 1.85V = 2.22Wh/g

Your battery is 30Ah/20 pounds * 12V = 18Wh/lb =.04Wh/g

So yes, this new battery is extremely energy dense. If you needed it to be 12V, though, you'd have to wire them in a series of 6, which would reduce the energy density by a factor of 6. Still a big improvement, but more like.35 Wh/g @ 12V, which is about 9 times better than your campin

I use a 30 amp-hour 12 volt battery when camping, it's about 20 pounds

Thats awful. Current mainstream Li-Ion cells get around 200Wh/kg, so 2kg (4lb) to replace yours. (Like a 36-40 cell battery used in electric bikes.)

LiS rigged demos in the lab claim 1200x1.8V= 2000Wh/kg (10 x current consumer Li-Ion) but TFA also says 4x, so lets realistically hope for a one pound LiS battery to replace your boat-anchor. That'll be ten years after they first appear in mobile phones and tablets, assuming not too many explode.

You take a battery camping? You obviously don't get it. The idea is to get away and go without the modern conveniences. I can think of only a few legitimate reasons to take a battery camping (medical conditions, emergency jump starter, maybe something else I've missed) but seriously a heated blanket and lights? Stay at home.

You take a battery camping? You obviously don't get it. The idea is to get away and go without the modern conveniences. I can think of only a few legitimate reasons to take a battery camping

Well thank you for that enlightened view on how other people can enjoy the same activities as you, with different purposes and/or opinions on how to go about enjoying those activities.

You complain about other people on the internet? You obviously don't get it. The idea of the internet is to encourage the free and open exchange of ideas. I can think of only a few legitimate reasons to complain about others on the internet (harassment, excessively inappropriate behavior, trolling, maybe something else I've missed), but seriously complaining about how someone chooses to go camping? Stop posting.

I'm a car camper. And I do camp at a campground, but in a private area (no water and just vault toilets).

But I camp 35 nights a year (for the last 5 years), so a lot of trips are single night. I just like sleeping in a tent.

I have 3 year old twins, and they come along for about 20 of the nights. They certainly aren't back country ready (they can identify a handful of trees and leaves at this point). We do hike 2-3 miles each day they go with me.

not everyone practices lightweight or ultralite weight packing when they go outdoors. ive actually known people who packed upwards of 70lbs of gear into their pack. i even did it myself in teh military (lil different there of course). and they go decent distances. they're also much more exhausted, and tire out faster. few of them go for extreme long distances though; msot everyone becomes a light weighter after attempting anything over 50 miles.

I only bring the electric blanket when it's 10F or below. And it turns off after 30 minutes so it's only used when I am going to sleep (preheat the sleeping bag) and when I wake up (it is heaven in the morning).

This is an impressive achievement, and interesting even if they report a relatively low (300) number of charge cycles. Too bad the article doesn't mention some other parameters:
- The article mentions power density "after 300 charging cycles". Is that the limit, or does it actually last for more cycles, and how fast does it drop off?
- How well do these batteries retain a charge? Li-Ion is quite good on that score; if I leave my cordless drill of the charger, it'll still be ready for use after a year.
- How well do these batteries deal with half-cycles (recharge when only half empty)? Is there a memory effect?
- What is the max rate of charge?

This is an impressive achievement, and interesting even if they report a relatively low (300) number of charge cycles. Too bad the article doesn't mention some other parameters:

- The article mentions power density "after 300 charging cycles". Is that the limit, or does it actually last for more cycles, and how fast does it drop off?

I recently replaced the battery in my 2008 model Macbook Pro. It was the original battery and had done 450 charging cycles. The run time was down to about a third of the new battery I replaced it with. So from a computer use 300 cycles is a good measure.

Well, 4x the capacity in this case, so only 1200 equivalent cycles. That's not the big issue though.

The big issue is that you are assuming that your usage patterns remain the same. And therein lies the rub - typically you want more battery capacity in order to enable greater use - if your laptop battery lasted 4x as long you probably wouldn't bother to plug it in unless doing so were really convenient, in fact with a 16-hour laptop battery I bet most people wouldn't even take their power cord with them du

Some Indian American teen won the intel science prize for charging a cell phone in 20 seconds. Let her loose on this technology and get that Tesla S model recharged in 5 minutes for 200 mile range! Now we are talking, baby!

But of course, all she had was just a super capacitor. It probably does not scale easily to vehicle sizes and anyway it is not an electro-chemical reaction based "battery."

1) What's the sustained and peak current delivery? 10C? 25C? 50C?2) Do you have to balance multi-cell packs like you do with current LiPo?3) Can you use existing charging methods?4) How much do they cost?

Considering the amount of sulfur that is being generated by oil production these days (http://folc.ca/sulphur_storage/waste_sulphur.htm) this could be a very good thing....but of course, ultimately, the sulfur needs to go somewhere.

Without volts, amp-hours is completely meaningless. If I have a process that can create a battery that stores 1.2Ah/g at 0.3V and I'm trying to beat a process that stores 0.3Ah/g at 1.2V then I've done nothing useful. Both store 360mWh/g (1296mWh/joules).
In fact, if you look at phys.org [phys.org] you'll find that the fourfold increase is not in Ah/g, but in J/g. It actually has an eightfold increase in Ah/g but the voltage drops by half.
So the article is right, but does a really bad job of explaining why.

They will figure out how to use that extra power somewhere, leaving us at around the same runtime as before.

"They"? Either the device is doing work four times more consuming, your device can stand by four times longer, or your device's battery is approximately four times lighter. Sure, retarded marketing drones are going to figure out a way to stuff four times the amount of adware onto a new laptop, but let's face it, they were going to do that regardless.

Assuming a 4 times increase in battery life at all scales and no size decrease, this would quadruple the range of electric cars - all for a simple battery tech switch. And the batteries are made partly from waste in another industry.

Not so simple, except in terms of the mechanic doing the battery replacement. (which of course is one of the beauties of electric vehicles - really easy aftermarket mods to the power system) Battery tech is *the* bottleneck for electric vehicles, and so far it's proved anything but easy to improve on significantly.

Indeed. I think I've been saying for around a decade "There's nothing wrong with EV's that a battery that lasts twice as long for half the price wouldn't fix'. Assuming this battery is identical to LiIon in cost per pound, the 4X energy density would mean that you could get 'extended range' Model S range at less than the price of a baseline one.

As is, the extended range batteries add so much weight to the vehicle that it adversely affects kwh per 100 miles - the 60 kwh battery is 35 kWh/100m, the 85 drops that to 38.

If an additional 25 kwh of battery currently does that, what happens if you 'only' double the total capacity, cutting the size/weight by half?

I really, really hope this becomes reality. Because I'd like to get an EV or a hybrid without breaking the bank, and it's my opinion that this is the last push needed.

>cutting the size/weight/and cost by half?FTFY, assuming cost/pound stayed the same of course.Now *that* would seriously kick-start the EV market. And start opening up the low end as well if you stuck with current ranges at 1/4 the cost, which are actually quite adequate for lots of people. Not to mention the effect it'd have on more city-friendly transportation like electric scooters, bikes, etc. which are currently right on the edge of widespread feasibility.

Now explain to me why all that work, which the typical user figures has been done by fairies or elves anyway, has any relevance to said user when he goes to get his battery changed? All he is going to care about is how much will it cost, how long will it take, and how much better will it be.

We truly stand on the shoulders of giants. Even a "simple" hammer or wheel isn't simple any more. There is serious research in both of those. And yet, I can still take a cash equivalent of one to three hours of my time and buy this device which literally has thousands of hours of research applied to it. It really is quite simple. Just like the tech switch between two different battery technologies.

Don't get me wrong, I like the added features, but I hope nobody expects laptops that can be used for multiple days in a row without recharging (with sleep mode enabled between sessions of course) or next-gen smart phones that can go a week without recharging. They will figure out how to use that extra power somewhere, leaving us at around the same runtime as before.

I'm much more interested in it for electric cars.

Four times the batter life in a cellphone? Meh - mine already lasts for days.

USB chargers are cheap. Leave one at work, one in car and one at home. I wish the smart phones will have a dumb phone mode that automatically shuts off everything other than the phone function when the remaining capacity falls below 3% or so and becomes a dumb phone. May be there is an app for this. But with touch screens there are no buttons and it is impossible to shut down the most energy consuming part of the smart phone, the screen.

I am often not in my car, or at work, or at home. I have looked into getting a portable battery to carry around as well. The phones are already thin enough. My Galaxy Nexus could double its thickness and still be comfortable to handle.

That's what I thought until I bought a double size battery for my Galaxy S3, it was horrible. Ended up with the Samsung larger capacity one that is only slightly larger, it's the battery they should have put in it in the first place.

I have used GS2 with a double size battery it was fine. Had the whole device been one thickness that would have been better. I have also handled an iphone with a case that doubled its thickness rather than bulging out in one place, that was also acceptable.

try getting a new phone, and you will experience what you have from the post you replied to. Under nonstop use new phones get about 8 hours now, which is a drastic improvement over previous models (even if we have a long way to go).

As 140manda notes is correct, use a USB charger in the car (that relies on simple USB cables) and take the cable with you wherever, if you need to. Then keep AC adapters wherever you need them. done.

Or on the other hand, to make cars lighter and/or cheaper. I considered EV-swapping my sports car late last year but went with another ICE because of the expense and weight. I figured I only needed 30 miles range, but it still would have added about 500lbs to the car and the battery alone would have been over $10k.

Well, no, they tell us in TFA that it's four times the energy density than a Li-Ion battery. We don't use the Li-Ion's native voltage (about 3.8v nominal for most of them) to power electric cars, either. The battery is made up of multiple cells connected in series (or series parallel for a big pack) such that the resulting battery voltage is what you need for your application.

What the article doesn't mention is what the 'C' rating for these batteries would be. Current lithium-ion technologies these days had very good C ratings, but early ones did not. The early batteries couldn't discharge at more than about 1C (so a 1 amp hour battery could only deliver a current of 1 amp without damage) but current lithium-polymer batteries often have C ratings >30. I have a Li-Poly battery for my RC gear that's about the size of two cigarette packs that can output enough current to easily start a car. Can Li-S batteries be built to have high C ratings for both charge and discharge? If not then they are only really useful in portable devices.

Do we know for a fact that this new battery technology can be deep cycled, in addition to withstanding prolonged high current draw applications like in electric cars, boats, and planes? If so then yes it would be revolutionary, provided it doesn't cost four times more then the current technologies.

4x the density would come in handy for powering stealth drones, the military should be very interested in this...

You don't 'need' lots of things, but that doesn't mean they can't help. Have you ever used something like Swype? It's far superior to any button phone I've used. The much larger display you get (due to no wasted space for meatspace keys) is a real boon, and the touchscreen itself is obviously more intuitive than messing about with arrow keys etc. for navigation.

Yes, they're sometimes expensive if you don't shop around, but I almost guarantee 'button' phones will be the exception rather than the rule in a

For you swype might be, for me it is totally useless. It does not even have a Crtl key. Arrow keys are something I must have, hard to use vim/shell without. Trying to touch the right spot to edit text is simply an exercise in futility. You have to touch and then move the marker around, arrows are way more precise.

It seems only hackers keyboard has the buttons I want. What Android really should have is a way to say I want this keyboard for that application. Instead of one setting for the whole OS.

I agree very much with the spirit of your post, since I'm a programmer (though would never dream of using a smartphone for that). However, in principle, and like you imply, smartphones should be able to add those custom keys, whilst with a real meatspace keyboard, you're stuck with the buttons they've given you.

I also agree with you about touching the right spot to edit text - it is a bit tacky. Arrows would be nice here (of course those can be on the smartphone too - don't have to be meatspace keys nece

Don't get me wrong, I like the added features, but I hope nobody expects laptops that can be used for multiple days in a row without recharging (with sleep mode enabled between sessions of course) or next-gen smart phones that can go a week without recharging. They will figure out how to use that extra power somewhere, leaving us at around the same runtime as before.

If someone will finally make a netbook with an e-ink screen, we could get around to that kind of battery life. I know the refresh rates suck, but the equivalent of a Kindle Paperwhite with a full keyboard, a basic word processing app, and a battery that lasts for days on end would be a writer's dream.

Of course what I *really* want is a full-sized (15"+) laptop with a transflective or color e-ink screen, so that I could sit outside wherever I like when working, rather than having to hide away somewhere that I can actually see my screen. It doesn't even need very good specs, your average $300 crap laptop is already overkill for almost everything except games. Just give me a tool that lets me spend the day hiking and working in the woods and I'm sold.

There's a tension between the advantages of bigger displays and more battery capacity, and the reality that smartphones are stepping into a niche in people's pockets normally occupied by a cellphone the size of a deck of cards. I certainly can't fit anything bigger than a 4-inch screen in my usual jeans pocket.

Running the same stuff, we'd see battery life go up. But for the same reason my desktop doesn't really feel that much faster than the one I had 10 years ago, I tend to agree... better batteries will just let us run what seems like the same stuff for the same amount of time.

Laptops? Smartphones? I'm more interested in applications for ultra-low power consumption devices. The devices I'm installing at work currently run off batteries for around 3-4 years at a time. I'd love to see these increased. I wonder what the shelf life / self-discharge rate of this new battery would be.

How about a camera? My camera only takes around 2000 photos on a single charge of it's two batteries. That's fine normally but a bit of a pain for multi-day timelapse footage where I invariably bump the ca

That won't be a bad thing for smartphones (I say that once you can go maybe 18 hours of average use between charges, that's enough), laptops could use more power though and electric cars sure as shit won't be wasting any of it.

except your statement doesn't reflect on reality.a: batteries have increased in both runtime and capacityand b: there's nothing wrong with expecting that trend to continue as it has. There are 8+ hour laptops now that don't involve carrying a brick with you - in fact, the only brick-carrying laptops now are the gaming laptops and that's the AC power brick they use.

Don't get me wrong, I like the added features, but I hope nobody expects laptops that can be used for multiple days in a row without recharging (with sleep mode enabled between sessions of course) or next-gen smart phones that can go a week without recharging. They will figure out how to use that extra power somewhere, leaving us at around the same runtime as before.

While I can see a few niche cashes for extended use, laptop batteries have been getting longer and longer battery life over the past 10-15 year

Battery runtimes have improved enormously in the past five years; the bottom-end machine I bought then could barely break two hours, my new low-end laptop easily manages four. However that's more due to improvements in the computer hardware's power efficiency than the battery's capacity.

If the battery capacity increases as well then its a double win. Power efficiency in chip design is beneficial for all sorts of reasons, not just battery life, so will continue to improve. Having increased battery life will impact the current devices. It should also make others more practical as a given capacity battery will take up less space.

Much of that has to do with that it's not a manufacturer's top priority, and also that just because a research battery achieves this doesn't mean it's ready for prime time. They still have to manufacture it into the form factors they want and test those, etc.

I'm sure Elon Musk is paying attention to this. He thinks an electric jet would be possible, and this would make that a whole lot easier to achieve. If they can commercialize it in the next couple of years, it would also be just in time to help Tesla develop its next-gen "affordable" EV. I wouldn't be surprised if he and/or Tesla invest in whatever company gets to bring this tech to market.

Jets push mostly air out of the engine. That's the "gas being forced out of a small opening." An electric jet would continue to push air, but rather than combusting something to get the turbine to spin, it would use electricity.

You could also build an electric propeller plane, of course, which also pushes air. It just doesn't have the requisite small opening to be a jet.

If they can commercialize it in the next couple of years, it would also be just in time to help Tesla develop its next-gen "affordable" EV.

Stop that! I'm about to drop dead from laughing too hard!

There is no fricking way that a battery technology in this kind of shape will enter a mass-produced automobile in the next TEN years, never mind two. Portable devices, I'd give 7-8 years if everything goes well. Fifteen years for automobiles, minimum.